Patch 5.3 - Dark Heart of Pandaria Scenario
The Dark Heart of Pandaria scenario takes place in the new hole in Vale of the Eternal Blossoms. Upon arriving, Grizzle Gearslip tells you that the mining has uncovered something that made the rocks come to life.

You must kill several trash mobs to drop the shield on the first boss, which is indicated by the bar on the bottom of your screen. After killing him, you collect artifacts from around the digsite for Grizzle while he clears the mine entrance. There are crates in a blue light that grant one artifact, special artifacts in yellow light that allow you to collect 3 unique artifacts for a 15 artifact bonus, and a pick that gives double artifacts for 15 seconds.

After collecting the artifacts, you can enter the mine and clear the way to the back, where you will find a goblin with a large explosive to open up a wall of the underground room they discovered. Inside the Vault of Y'Shaarj there is a chest suspended from chains attached to the ceiling which contains the Echo of Y'Shaarj. Upon defeating him, the scenario is complete and the extra lore begins. A conversation takes place between Malkorok and Grizzle, who is underpaid and not happy!

Tier-15 Retribution Paladin 2-piece set bonus will no longer interrupt the Paladin's weapon swing timer when Exorcism is cast.

Quests

Charged Moganite: Players under the effects of Charged Moganite will now deal a flat amount of nature damage against a target, subject to the effects of Resilience and other effects that reduce spell damage.

The Darkness Within: Captain Doren should no longer get stuck in evade if a player dies while he is casting Rejection.

Creatures

Loa-Infused Bladetalon now deals less damage when using the Pounce ability.

Garalon's enrage timer has been increased to 12 minutes, up from 7 minutes in 10-player and 25-player Normal difficulty.

Items

Brutal Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault now grants a reduced bonus of 6908 to Strength when the effect is activated in PvP combat, down from 8800. The bonus remains unchanged when the effect is activated in PvE combat.

Vicious Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault now grants a reduced bonus of 6908 to Agility when the effect is activated in PvP combat, down from 8800. The bonus remains unchanged when the effect is activated in PvE combat.

Durumu Maze Improvements

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Just wanted to follow up with some additional information, as we've seen a few questions since the changes.

In a hotfix yesterday, we changed two elements of the Durumu Eye Sore mechanic, or the “maze” as it’s more commonly known. First off, we applied a small client patch to increase the visual fidelity of the fill graphic itself, giving the effect less vertical height and hopefully making it easier to see the safe spots as they appear. Feedback on this change has generally been positive. Separately, at the same time we made some adjustments to the logic of how the maze is drawn with respect to the movement of the Disintegration Beam. One of the less intuitive aspects of the original maze mechanic was how it would begin drawing behind you, and how the right thing to do was actually to turn around and back up, towards the approaching death beam, in order to safely enter the forming maze. Why would any sane person want to move closer to a death beam?!

We generally are extremely cautious about making gameplay adjustments to encounters once players have already learned them, but in this case the opening of the Halls of Flesh-Shaping LFR wing highlighted the fact that the mechanic was a particular source of confusion to many players, and the longer we waited to make any adjustment, the more disorienting it would be if we did change anything. So what we did was make the maze immediately begin drawing in front of the player as the beam activates, so that you never need to turn around and run towards the beam. This also effectively gives players a slight head-start on the beam as it begins to move. To maintain the same sense of urgency, the beam does move slightly more quickly now, so that it will, over the course of the phase, catch up to players and negate that head start. But the player movement required once you’re actually running the maze should be unchanged. We have noted, however, that at the very end of the maze sequence, it can now feel like the fast-approaching death ray is going to reach you, making it feel like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. To address that concern, we are making another adjustment today, which will cause the death ray to dissipate a few seconds earlier at the end of the maze.

Unless you're in the MELEE safe zone, you WILL die without a speed boost of some sort.
Yeah, we noticed that, and a fix went out at about 1pm today. You should be all good in the ranged track now.

Incomplete LFR Runs

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Honestly, I think that this phenomenon will settle down once the ToT LFRs are on cakewalk mode. All the 5.0 LFRs are snooze fests now (never a wipe) even on alts with crap gear.

If the current situation (half done raids) is bothering you, I suggest waiting until each wing is 2 weeks old before doing it. Already, Part 1 of ToT is a breeze and Part 2 only really stumbles on Mr Turtle (more from tank disagreements than difficulty) from what I have seen on various alts.
To further reinforce this, our data shows that the success rates in each new Throne of Thunder LFR wing are close to par with those of Dragon Soul, Mogu'shan, Terrace and Heart of Fear LFRs when they were first released. Statistically, the success rates in a new LFR wing roughly double within 2-3 weeks of release, and we're comfortable with that. As those success rate increase, the cycle of people dropping early due to group failure decreases substantially, and that should really add stability, in terms of players being much more likely to be put into a fresh instance if they weren't the first time around.

The system was supposed to prioritize people for a new instance if they joined one already in progress. It currently doesn't. So now you're forced to do the same boss twice, and only have a chance at loot once.

This makes it a bad system. Is that hard to grasp? You make sure we can't complete normals/heroics more than once per week.
It's an absolute fact that the system HIGHLY prioritizes you for a fresh instance if you're queueing solo and have already completed an in-progress version of that instance in a given week. What the system won't do, however, is lock you out of being put into an instance indefinitely because it can't match enough people together with that same priority to make a proper raid group.

And, while it is true that a boss you've already killed won't drop items for you when it dies, you can still use a bonus roll if you have one.

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

UI / Addonssince you're expanding hunter stable slots, any chance you guys will bump up the number of macro slots?
We've talked about it, but we'd rather redesign the system to require fewer macros for things players frequently do. (Source)

I'm sure you've thought about this, so what are your thoughts on an action bar-saving system, similar to raid frame profiles?
Would love to do it. (Source)

what about ui? players are used to it and its been around for so long, but would you change it if you went back?
Fewer micro buttons and more done with the V name plates for starters. (Source)

Any chance of getting mount previews when buying them? I'd love to be able to crtl-click the "reins" and get a preview window
Agreed. That has been on our wish list for a long time. (Source)

The Daily Blink - The Kirin Tor / The SunreaversThe Daily Blink has a nice version of the Kirin Tor and Sunreavers logos.

" Volatile Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault now grants a reduced bonus of 6908 to Agility when the effect is activated in PvP combat, down from 8800. The bonus remains unchanged when the effect is activated in PvE combat." -- This lists the INT trinket than the AGI trink.

didn't really see the need for the nerfs but if your a casual group just wanting to play around thats what normal modes should be for. I still have a bunch of friends that were having issues and they'll be happy to see this.

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 10:38 AM ----------

Originally Posted by FpicEail

Throne of Thunder nerfs, right after we clear the raid for the week

Holy crap, Garalon's enrage timer. Not sure if that was necessary, Blizzard needs to be encouraging a better standard for DPS these days.

Because the enrage timer for out of date content to get gear that is supposed to be a quick gear up really matters